Catalan Rift May Derail Sanchez’s Plans for Spain All Over Again

Rodrigo Orihuela

27 Jan 2020, 11:47 PM IST

(Bloomberg) -- Catalan President Joaquim Torra was stonewalled by his coalition partners as he defied a Spanish court decision by casting a vote in the regional parliament.

In a clash that could force the Catalan separatist question to the top of the agenda in Spain once again, Torra tried to cast his vote in the assembly on Monday. Spain’s Supreme Court had upheld a decision by the electoral board to stop him from voting and his attempt to do so was dismissed by the regional parliament speaker who is a member of Esquerra Republicana, a separatist party that governs Catalonia in partnership with Torra’s Junts per Catalunya force.

The Catalan infighting could potentially cause problems for Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who relied on Esquerra to help form a government at the start of the year and whose support he will likely need to be able to pass a national budget. If the dispute ends up forcing new elections in Catalonia, that could make Esquerra toughen its stance against the government in Madrid as it vies with Junts for pro-independence votes.

The rift between the two parties was clear on Monday when Torra spoke in the regional parliament. While deputies from his own party rose to applaud him, their Esquerra counterparts sat quietly in their seats.

Sanchez himself is due to meet Torra in early February in what was supposed to be a sign of his attempts to cultivate a new atmosphere of dialogue with the separatists. Torra’s own position could worsen in the next weeks as the Supreme Court prepares to deliver a final ruling on his situation.

The election board had disqualified Torra from holding his seat after he ignored orders to remove pro-independence symbols from official buildings.

To contact the reporter on this story: Rodrigo Orihuela in Madrid at rorihuela@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Charles Penty at cpenty@bloomberg.net, Ben Sills